Lesson Development Team
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Background
The Lesson Development Team is a group of
Lexington High School Mathematics teachers
that collaborated for two school years (2002-04) to develop innovative learning activities enabling students
to develop deeper understanding of mathematical ideas. Team members were Dea Haupt,
Kevin Kelly,
Todd Kresser,
Walter Richardson, and John Shea (2002-03 only).
The team participated in the Lesson Study Communities project of the
Educational Development Center, sponsored by the
National Science Foundation.
Lesson materials
These documents are Copyright (C) 2002-2004 by D. Haupt, K. Kelly, T. Kresser,
W. Richardson, and J. Shea. Classroom teachers are granted permission to duplicate
these materials for use with their own students. All other rights are reserved.
We would appreciate receiving feedback from teachers who use any of our lesson ideas
or materials. Please write to kkelly@sch.ci.lexington.ma.us.
- Bicycle Rides
- This is a spreadsheet-based activity for beginning calculus students, involving position and
velocity data in numerical and graphical representations.
- Hot Peppers: Making an Exponent Ruler
- This is an activity that introduces the concept of logarithms by having students construct
their own "exponent rulers." Heat values of chile peppers are used as a motivating
example. Follow-up questions ask the student to analyze the ruler's properties,
making observations that eventually lead to properties of logarithms. The optional
sequel lesson "Hot Tamale" introduces 2-dimensional graphing on semi-logarithmic "exponent paper."
- Zeros and Solutions
- This is a lesson for Algebra 2 students that are about to
begin studying functions other than linear functions. Students work through
several problems that the develop the idea that f(x)=g(x) has a solution
wherever the difference f(x)-g(x) has a zero. Problems involve a variety of
representations (equations, tables, graphs) and include problems in applied
contexts (such as two clowns flying through the air).